Recent devastating earthquakes in Turkey have emphasized inadequate seismic performance of school buildings. Many school buildings are affected by destructive earthquakes due to poor quality of construction, poor workmanship, and lack of maintenance. This study aims to evaluate nonlinear behavior of a school building with template design for different concrete strength and transverse reinforcement amount observed in existing public buildings. Template design 8841-Y1 with 24- classroms and constructed in the first and second seismic zones is selected for study. Three concrete strength values typical in existing public buildings were considered as 10, 13 and 16 MPa. Transverse reinforcement amount was represented with spacing; three spacing values were taken as 250, 150, and 100 mm representing poor to well confinement spacing values, respectively. The results showed that both concrete strength and transverse reinforcement amount have effects on nonlinear behavior of the selected building. The better concrete strength provides a slightly higher lateral load capacity while the increase in transverse reinforcement amount improves ultimate displacement capacity. It should be noted that although the building with the poor concrete strength and relatively small amount of transverse reinforcement has a fair displacement capacity, there were significant number of columns suffered from shear failures at the level of lateral load capacity loss. Loss in several columns did not affect capacity curve due to major lateral load capacity of shear walls. Another outcome is that the selected building has no sufficient lateral load capacity compared to 1998 Turkish Earthquake Code. Several strengthening alternatives as different amount of additional shear walls were used to increase the capacity of the building.